SCOPE OF SPECIAL ISSUE: China is an increasingly influential emerging country. Its impressive economic growth has elevated hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and has therefore been hailed as one of the greatest achievements of modern history. The rise of China's economy has been contributed by the private sectors where entrepreneurs have played a pivotal role. However, Chinese entrepreneurship was only enabled after institutional reforms began in the late 1970s. Since then, institutional reforms continued to facilitate and expand entrepreneurship in China by improving the business environment. As Chinese entrepreneurs become increasingly competitive, they will also become more dependent on external financial resources to fund their businesses. This increasing reliance on external capital will in turn enhance the demand for business ethics and corporate governance, since accountability and stewardship promotes confidence among outside investors. Thus, there is an interrelationship between entrepreneurship, corporate finance and governance, and institutional reform is crucial to China's past, current and future economic development. The success of China's economy so far warrants studies of these issues to acquire insights and inform the development of other emerging countries. This call of paper invites empirical studies on these issues that are specific to the Chinese setting and could provide useful policy implications.

TOPICS: Specific topics and research questions can include, but are not limited to:
- What kind of regulations or institutional reforms facilitates ethical, sustainable and socially responsible entrepreneurship?
- What kind of regulations or institutional reforms encourages venture capital, private equity, and capital market investment in ethical, sustainable and socially responsible entrepreneurship?
- Do business ethics and corporate governance mechanisms improve capital acquisition and reduce cost of capital for entrepreneurs?
- Do sustainable and ethical entrepreneurs perform better and what type of corporate financing approach or corporate governance mechanism improves their performance?
- What are the appropriate performance metrics for sustainable and ethical entrepreneurs?
- Do sustainable and ethical entrepreneurship lead to more successful IPO and better post-IPO performance?
- What factors exacerbate the frequency of fraud in private and publicly traded companies?
- What regulatory or governance tools mitigate the incidence of fraud among private and publicly traded companies?
- Do political connections deter fraud and facilitate corporate transparency and corporate social responsibility?
- How do central and local governments encourage ethical investment in private and publicly traded companies?
- What is the role of different types of investors (such as private equity, hedge funds, banks, or institutional investors) in mitigating the incidence of fraud among private and publicly traded companies?
- What is the role of different types of investors (such as private equity, hedge funds, banks, or institutional investors) in stimulating new firm creation, particularly those in socially responsible industries?
- How does ethical investment and fraud compare in China with other emerging economics, and what factors (legal, institutional, institutional, or cultural) affect these differences?

To aid in the development of papers, a two-day conference will be held in Beijing, China on 6-7 April 2013. Acceptance to the conference does not guarantee acceptance into the special issue. Likewise, papers may be considered for the special issue that are not presented at the conference.

PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: In your submissions, please indicate whether you want your paper to be considered for the special issue of Journal Business Ethics (JBE). By submitting a paper, authors are certifying (a) that the submission is original, unpublished work, (b) that in whole or material part it is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere. Papers will be externally double-blind reviewed according to standard journal policy, following which authors will be invited to present their papers at a special issue conference. Interested authors should submit their papers in two PDF files: one with the name, affiliation, and contact information of the authors and one anonymous copy for blind review. Please follow JBE guideline: ( http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/applied+ethics/journal/10551) for manuscript presentation and put "JBE 2013 China Special Issue Conference" as the subject heading of the submission email.

Papers are to be submitted to: Douglas Cumming, dcumming@schulich.yorku.ca

KEY DATES:
Submission Deadline: 1 November 2012
Authors will be notified by: 20 December 2012
Special Issue Conference: 67 April 2013 (Saturday and Sunday)
Revise and resubmit process begins: 30 June 2013
Notification of acceptance to Special Issue: December 2013

ABOUT JBE: The Journal of Business Ethics publishes original articles from a wide variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning ethical issues related to business that bring something new or unique to the discourse in their field. All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and refereeing by two anonymous referees. JBE is one of the top 45 journals used by the Financial Times in compiling the prestigious Business School research rank and is included in the Social Science Citation Index.